


Uranoxidkeramiken sind Sicher

by blagtiwitenois



Category: Pink Floyd
Genre: A Hospital, Driving, First chapter may or may not simulate being on psychidelics, Gen, I took a painstaking amount of time to be accurate about all the settings, Multilingual, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Painfully slow-paced, Resurrection, Satanic birds and regular ones, present day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29134452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blagtiwitenois/pseuds/blagtiwitenois
Summary: ...as long as the glaze isn't chipped. Unglücklicherweise, this seems to be the case.A re-write of No.2 Was Caused By Fiestaware. However, as this story has a more sensible framework based on the first, it may turn out radically different.
Kudos: 1





	1. Scharlachrot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter is read as relatively psychotic, and is only the introduction to the story. Though it doesn't feature much of the Floyd themselves (a bit of Dave), we get to see lots of dreams, visions, memories, and hallucinations. The unnamed point-of-view here is the Host (as in, you know, the victim of a parasite, or et cetera), who will expire next chapter in order to give way to someone much more relevant...  
> This is the most disjointed part of the story, and we will soon be introduced to the other people we all know and love.

There it was. Up in the sky, right there. He saw it, he knew it was real. Real in that it was a tangible, twisting being, a tendril made of many tendrils, casting an apocalyptic glow over the darkness. Pure colour and pure heat, a slow-waving spectrum in front of his eyes. It would present the first colour he felt he had ever known, the first in the prismatic lineup. The colour was, by default, number one in many perceptions. Not of black, in which he was not referring to achromatic colours. This had hue, nearly pure hue of just-missed maximum intensity. If it were to be inputted in RGB, the colour code would be ff2400, decimal code 100, 14, 0. Radiating psychological effects that would produce cortisol in most viewing it, in him it incited a feeling, this a single emotion only. There was no other colour for it to be impurified and confused with, it was directly from the source of all basic consciousness, what kept any and every animal alive. This was fear, absolute fear. He had never felt the way he was currently, not since he was a young child with incessant nightmares. The sensation that was forgotten for decades returns at his psyche's doorstep, and he remembered it much too quickly, much too vividly. This was a static, but churning wave of fire, this was Hell manifested as an entity, grasp snaking towards him. No, this was worse, the bane of human existence: an indescribable concept of terror. He knew it was happening, only he could not see it. It was going to come upon him when he still was looking. Or long after, when he had forgotten it was always there, just lurking right behind him. The only direction he knew he was heading was death, in some shape or form. The Reaper would be waiting, scythe scintillating in the dreadful...

_...Red..._

...He couldn't escape the fire and brimstone. The wall wept sparks and sloughed currents of torrid air, which had a rolling surge like pahoehoe lava... or abhorrent amounts of molten wax. He conjured an image in his mind, the concept of a solitary candle. It was slightly larger than an unlimbed torso, many melted and re-solidified drippings of wax indicating the lengthy time that it has been burning. With each second that passed, he felt that certain death approaching, the disproportionately small wick tipped with a minuscule light that illuminated everything. That tidal conflagration, in fact, was the flickering flame of the solitary candle. The crown of the paraffin was, indeed, made of this combusting oxygen. And so did its stringed wick blacken and burn, twist white and blue in a spiral so tight, so short, so small...

And preordinately, inserted into a cake.

David, in gradual realisation, raised his eyebrows and blinked multiple times in confusion. He's sitting in a chair, at one end of a- no, _the_ table, people... ahem, his children, lining it as if it were a gold-embroidered rug. At the end of the table was his wife, who was staring at David with slight concern. _Multiple_ candles adorned _his_ cake. Plain vanilla, it seemed, and he was relieved by that, because he didn't have to guess why anyone would select anything else. He would be too bewildered to even behold a derivative colour, that of a foodstuff culinarily representing the celebration of his birthday. He flitted his eyes up, the room dark except for the wavering of the candles, which, fortunately, did not begin to spontaneously burn vermilion. The complacent, commonplace candle flame colour brought some form of ease. Realising he was staring at the wicks again, he fully turned his attention to the others in the room, staring expectantly. Heavily contrasted in shading, the setting of a chiaroscuro painting, he saw no eyes, but felt every pair of them.

"David, are you okay?"

He saw the moving shadow against light that was a mouth from the other end of the table, and it took him a moment to re-contextualise who it was supposed to be.

  
"Yes, I'm quite alright," he replied, not hearing much of his own voice. However, it seemed to slither across the table, circumvent the cake, go around a wine glass or two, and into Polly's ear, competently enough.

  
"Then why don't you blow out your candles?" she rhetorically inquired.

David nodded, the stillness beginning to break as the others assumed everything had returned to normalcy. Teeth flashed at him, framed in sideways, upturned D's. Eyes that David was familiar with, just until recently, currently confused him. Something, he was feeling it do so, began to creep on his mind. A metaphorical spectre, in anticipation of what the others were going to cheer when he extinguished his candles. It wasn't that the aforementioned segment of his birthday would do anything, except maybe some kind of placebo for the superstitious. The en-quote 'mystical' had nothing to do with him, nor vice-versa.

"David, is there something wrong?" Questioned Polly, yet again.

"No, no, just thinking, maybe a bit too much," readily responded David, who was attempting to concentrate on the matter these people- his _family_ , expected something out of him that wouldn't ignite worry. David nodded for the second time, and narrowed his eyes at the candles.

  
He inhaled, and exhaled through his mouth. Right then, the lively chorus of what he had been imagining, resounded:

_Make a wish!_

At that time, the voices seemed to come in from outside the walls, from the skies or down below. They didn't seem to come from the vocal cords and mouths of his family, even though he saw their oral movement. Milliseconds stretched out into minutes, each of the flames blowing away from David, losing their resistance and heat, candlelight dimming and disappearing in a simultaneous flash and slow fade. The glowing tips of the wicks were all that were left, which were beginning to emit thin trails of smoke. David, in deep observance, snapped out of his fixation and cemented the hopeless superstition as his wish, out into the world.

What I'd never wanted to do was to go insane. I don't know what's solid, what's up or down. I can't feel anymore, I can't do anything anymore. There's a tautness that is indicative of something needing to be resolved, started, or completed, but it's a lie. What is there, is nothing. What am I, is nothing. I would like to scream, to cry out in anguish, but that in itself would be a performance. Everything I do is fabricated, preordained, and there is no one to help me. Feeling helpless is all I can be, because nothing satisfies. Everything is absolute boredom, novelty simply ceasing to exist at a point in time I can't remember. Barely able to accomplish what I used to, I yet again trod over the broken pieces of glass scattered all the flooring in my miserable existence. Compulsively opening a drawer, I see the miscellaneous contents inside. I do not remember what they are supposed to be. I don't know they're made of, what they're used for, or their emotional significance. The only thing I understand at all is the severed head of a porcelain egret. Covered in a thick glaze, its original features have been despecified to a near-abstract shape.

Once again, I cry over it, as all else is lost besides this. I don't know which item in this house is the body to it. The role of this intentionally detail-depleted, fragment of a whole object, as my sole anchor to this world, the guardian of the gateway to complete insanity... is a cruel irony. I can only _fully_ perceive broken things. Things destroyed beyond the original context. I'm going mad. Or rather, I'm deep in the madness, and no one can help me out. The tiles are alternately tacky and sticky with the biohazard that is my blood, and the place smells strongly of vinegar in my befuddled attempt to suppress the worse acridity of spilt bile. Somewhat ironic is the state of my cheerfully pigmented ceramic dishwares, which have never broken in all my years of ownership. However, now, with one slip from my atrophying hand, they shatter like the delicate English porcelain. _Now_ is when I am at my lowest of lows, which is only continuing to descend.

I have no idea what caused it, I can barely reach the date it happened now. Attempting to remember anything delivers the horrible sensation of having the recollection just out of reach. If I strain in what feels like a physical battle for minutes upon minutes, I may or may not reach it.

  
Wait... The night of March 6th. That was it, that was the date. I was afflicted with a slight fever, typical symptoms causing typical unpleasantry. It phased in and out for a few weeks, each returning time becoming more severe. I began to get concerned at the chronic nature of this ailment, and therefore consulted my doctor.

I heard the worst thing I could hear:

  
"There is nothing wrong with you."

  
Things began to go downhill, as if I boarded a plane that was guaranteed to crash. It was inevitable that I would fall into this pit, and never see the light of day again. I don't think I ever will. Every day, I'm becoming increasingly invisible, increasingly estranged from reality.

Unenthusiastic bolts of fire shoot up my legs as my impaled and marred feet shuffle into a puddle of vinegar/stomach acid. I look down, muttering a slight 'oh'. That's the real thing that hurts; my voice the aural equivalent of putting one's own finger into a cheese grater. Something that I often visualise these... days...

  
...The sweet bliss of sleep is only haunted by a spectre. A ghost who is a blurry, ethereal outline painted with brushstrokes, whose mind isn't there. But I suspect it's slowly gathering its wits, fishing some sentience from the abysses. On the night of March 7th, it was just a single line, made of a broad, thin veil of smoke. The phantom was born as a single brushstroke a dozen metres away, representing a completely abstractified concept known only to the artist's mind. The next night, I had the same dream. How much closer it may have been, in distance and to what it resembles now, it was still static.

This has continued consistently. As I lost my sense of being, this entity accumulated an identity, every dream presenting a new, slight detail I didn't realise was there. The changes happened near-undetectable, but I knew when something was altered when it became apparent enough. However, it wasn't as revelational as if it had happened instantaneously, a slow trickle of conversion. Currently, it is only a metre away. Despite the fact that it has never moved, I still dread the speculation that it will. I can't move, either, only behold it. Given enough time, we will be face-to-face. What would be its manifestation then?

  
I stare at the spectre, which has gradually gained the vague shape of a person. It has no face, fortunately, because I don't want to associate it with one.

It sprouts a pair of eyes.

  
...Wait.  
What?!

I feel my own oculars widening in shock, a harpoon of startlement stabbing through my person. A pair of real eyes, nauseating in contrast to its arguable form, fixate on me. They threaten me with no expression, dark cyan irises holding me at half-existent knifepoint. There's nothing behind those black pupils but homicidal thoughts. The sclera is tinged a sleepless red, unblinking, a chalice held in a hand of irritated capillaries. But they twitch and rove, taking in everything they're processing... presumably.

  
It has the advantage, in which it can move its eyes, but I can only stare at its singular-feature face. Worse yet is the speculation of further abilities that have not yet been revealed, and what would be even worse than that is-

  
Oh. I see, it's already happening. It moves, and only a metre away, it is instantly available. Staring, seething with inexplicable anger radiating like the sun on a monsoonless desert in the height of summer, it sets the amorphous endings of its upper appendages on my shoulders.

Still not moving, still feeling nothing, except something now:

_My time is due._

But this is not death. This is an entity that was procured on March 6th, or summoned from the depths of a roaring void, or fished from a sea in Greece. A great big conger eel I have in my catch, and I absolutely despise the slippery rope of muscle tissue. Unfortunately, it has bitten my ankle off and is consuming my leg. Being the largest of the eels, the European conger eel is...

"A superlative predator," says the thing, with no mouth. "It is proprietary that you, minuscule mackerel, shall be consumed and assimilated."

Piscious analogies aside (and immediately re-indulged), I know I will soon not exist. The eel will take my place. Swimming and swimming, the currents of the Aegean rushing around my scales, metallic brilliance an unfortunate beacon in the translucent deep of azure, liquid frosted glass. I know the predator, two or three metres long, is horizontally oscillating in the distance behind, but its forwarding faster than I am. The tides roll above, alternately glaucous and shades of aquamarine as it catches the light, which slips out of its watery grasp moments later. The spare rays stick their straight lines into the water, only to be distorted and fractured by the restless surface, piqued by the breeze that skims it. I am swimming pearls and fourteen-carat gold, soon to only be a memory and, quite possibly, a faint cloud of red.

As I anticipate nonexistence in my final moments, I dare not turn around, as the ever-present glimmer of hope clings to my form, attempting to assure that it won't be me, I won't end up as nothing, my consciousness is permanent, I will live on.But mortality is inevitable. The sea whispers all around me, like schools of herring swarming by, telling me the same thing over and over:

_Your only purpose is death..._

In the distance behind, lies just that.

But in the distance ahead... something catches my eye. Something like a physical manifestation of that glimmer of hope, and something that appeals to a rudimentary instinct. It sparkles a single sparkle, a gleam like a silver sea-sun. I must.

  
I desire it so, and I won't look back.

  
Deftly wriggling forward with increased propellation, I focus on this. I will not be caught

Closer there.

I will not die.

Even closer.

I will see that light,

I can be there if I try-

I bite.

Piercing through the roof of my mouth, through my skin and skull, I see no such anguilliform. Only swathes of crimson go through my vision, the sensation of the currents forcing me somewhere they should not: upwards. If it's even the currents at all; more likely by the force of this strange creature I have attempted to consume, dragging me towards the surface. It seems I have inadvertently impaled myself upon the concept of hope... but escaping from the eel seems like a much better chance now. Might as I try to hold reason, I thrash, trying to get away and take this situation to my full advantage.

  
That is, until I see the silhouette of a body, a massive fish. It dwarfs the eel, it dwarfs everything I've seen, and it floats, placid and still, on the surface.

  
The hope drags me further vertically, I further in pain, TO this Fish God. Thin trails of blood, the colour of darkened snapper-scale, twisted out like the movements of the eel, coming from either corner of my mouth. My fins come towards the rays of the sun, yet straining and desperate to not meet its dehydrating irradiation. For it will inflict its hate upon my aquiferous being, I soon only to be a differing memory, and much more likely this time, a waterless branch of ray-finned dry flesh.

Bleached, dead coral is the colour of its unnaturally dipaneled belly (a shallow, inverse tent), a single, presumably cartilaginous, fin that passes by, and then I am freed...

...Into suffocation. For the first time, these gills throb unnaturally, flitting in and out as confused vents with no water to intake. Pectorals and pelvics flailing like netted wings, feeble. The only view is as if watercolours were bleeding into one another, and is it oh-so-hot and oh-so-cold at the same time.

  
And as it allows me to, because it does, because the Fish God wills, I fastball a u-curve in evolution. Scaling back towards further rudimentation, falling down a ladder of phyla and fossils, the first to exist of a species that was dead long ago, success and death, succession and deceasing until the world's oxygen is far too much, where I am choking on the obscene and gross plethora of it. I come to flop in agony, sizzling and suffocating as teethed knives scrape my insides, on a crucifix, burned at the stake, attacked with hydrofluoride, melting and incinerating, needles in my spine, ribs split open. I am a discontent reptile, a bizarre synapsid, an unrealised morganucodontid, a begging dryomomys, a clawing purgatorius, a distant primate, an outreaching anamensis, a grasping Australopithecus, a holding paleoanthrope, and an obtaining me.

  
And I, like these other discarded incarnations, am due to die this quickly. But for now, I'm here, and therefore I shall observe in my last moments. I'm on a... watercraft. There is a tall, moonlike sail, which gently and broadly waves its giant triangular plumes, some kind of bobbing gull, on a relatively flat sea. The seabirds arc overhead, doing their spluttering screeches, in frustration having little wind as their ally. Lining the coast is a village, a modern Mesa Verde pueblo. It gleams, white on white on blue, navy and cyan square specks of windows and doors. These colour contrasted entrances act as themselves in a metaphorical sense as well, viewing directly into what seems to be a gateway to the sky. The heavens, however, are miles above, a cloudless parallel to the sea. With these two vast slices of horizon-passing cerulean, the mortal plane is firmly encased. Furthermore, humanity is trapped in its own layer of societal existence, consciousness allowing it to deviate from its instinctual machinations. In a universe created purely by what can only be science, the mind defies and attempts to explain anything, and everything, illogically.

_MINDGREEDY_

_FORITSOWNJU_

_ICESPLASHESIN_

_SENSUALWAV_

_ESMINDDRIVI_

_ESBODYRIDEST_

_HUSEVERYTHI_

_NGRUNSAWAY_

But if human thought and human superstition are enough to influence the world around it, even if it is their own minuscule bubble-within-a-bubble, what exactly could happen?

  
Consciousness shouldn't be a mystery. It's a purely spontaneous mutation. Why is this happening?

I turn around.

Present on the boat is the figure, with its new pair of tinted teal eyes and no other distinguishing features. The sun is directly above us, instead of a grey, dingy corner of the void. It retains its brushstrokes, a feathery and ashen singularity around its videographic surroundings. But it spoke, I forgot that it spoke before, and I barely had time to think about it. That voice was not the scentless, smoky haze it dwelled in, not its manifestation as a background figure in an Impressionist painting, not how it never displayed any characteristics at all. The voice... was soft, misty, and pure poison, the sensation of the slow-motion stroke of a dart frog.

"Do not speak again," I demand. It only interacts by looking at me, its eyes grotesque in contrast to its visually uneventful majority. These hated eyes glisten like the entrails of a disembowelled fish, unwelcomely pinkish and venose.

  
"No," It replies, a cold wave of a feeling akin to starvation, but moreso dread, washing over me. I re-experience that feeling all over again, this time in full, non-liminal awareness. "You will be the one to never speak again."

  
I open my mouth to disprove-

Awake. I'm awake, and I'm alive, yet still so smothered by the sensation of a dream. It reminds me of the nights I used to lie insomniated, thinking about death's inevitability. How one day, I'd be drawing my last breaths, and since time progresses by the moment, from one to the next, where it is a linear function and cannot loop back in on itself. Death merely has to wait its twenty or fifty, or ninety-nine years, for one's expiration.

_Time is a linear function. It is a general function as well. For a set of numbers to be a function, all the x values must be different. This can also be told by observing an accompanying coordinate graph- trace your finger along the x-axis. If there are more than two numbers simultaneously at any point along the axis, then it is NOT a function._

I shouldn't have doubts about this.

Lying on the floor, sinuses burning from inhalation of fine particles of glass, I wonder if I should even incite the slightest attempt at effort. Right here, right now, is the perfect time to simply cease to live.

  
There is a vision directly above me, that is the thing with its too many eyes (that being two of them). I want to speak, to tell it to take me, but the words catch in my throat, a nightmare in a dreamcatcher, the shared gurgle of a premature, suffocating baby, a young man getting stabbed in the throat, and a sixty-something with a throttle-breath from a terminal, cancerous affliction of that very same area.

It can't be denied- we're all dying here.

I see its nebulous fist decide it's going to become more defined, and it outstretches into five branches, which claw upon themselves and distort into talonish shapes. Not much later, it asserts some internal structure that corresponds with the limiting carpals, nails, tendons... limiting the humanising hand from self-injury.

  
The result is as equally as strange as the eyes, being a dove-coloured, corpselike hand. To elaborate, the colour of dust, the mourning variety's wing, plaintive cries haunting the scorched summers and slowly-tortured spring of America's Mediterranean.

"You're in a vulnerable position," it notes, making no sound from the glass below its non-footed, non-legs, as it begins to circle. "It would be a desirable time to execute what has been laid out."

I would tell it I don't mind, feeling that life is not to be valued anymore.

  
Its hand is particularly articulate, and it continuously manipulates its fingers on the single appendage. The motion, variable, repetitious, and mesmerizing, draws my visual attention, such as is a kinetic sculpture's nature. Even though the brief flash of steel or iron, or whatever it is, out of the corner of my eye is slightly intriguing and cause for question, the movements directly presented are of higher importance.

"You are no longer dying..."

A sensation I've felt many times from my dreams, a faint, dulled papercut from the grace of a knife. A forced sensation, a departing edge penetrating weak solid defences, and compromising the semisolids and liquids of the interior.

"...Because you are already dead."

Twist, goes the edge, and the sun sets on the horizon, the rays heightening with a final pained gasp as they, too, begin to sink. The sky was once a silk sheet, now no longer rippling in the wind, playing the light loose and free, but tied down from horizon to horizon, tortured as it is drenched with red. It spins with stars fading in, the very core of the earth nauseated as the dervish intensifies. The colours blur and blend together, memories bleeding out. There in the dark, lies a beast made of the subordinating chemicals of death, bringing unreasonable peace, euphoria, or even madness.

Darkness falls above, but caves are far above, and in literal below, something as frivolous as diurnal and nocturnal cycles, are in perpetual black. The waves roll by, but there is little to motion in water underground other than the echoing drip of limestone water from stalactites. The seasons change only superficially, the wind may be warm, but in these subterranean locations, perpetual stagnation replaces Aeolus' grace.

  
In these Aching Caverns Without Lucidity, are the dead placated.

How futile is identity?

What is the strength of a wish?

Can identity be centrifugally snuffed by a blade?

Could something as intangible as a wish procure this action?

Deep within the Mental Caverns Without Sunshine, is something stirred. What one bequests will affect another, and in this case, an inevitable binary is developing. What is in current happening cannot be done, yet it is happening, and therefore cannot be undone. A catalyst was required, and by this wish, murder was effectively, unwittingly committed.

  
And so, Fate goes fishing.

A harsh night descended, feasting on the corpse of a once-terrible summer. Though fall had just begun, it seemed that winter's onset was eager, and it clumsily dove in and out in an elliptical fashion. The pattern seemed to be sixty degrees one day and forty-five the next. Tonight was a _thirty-_ five night, and frost was creeping onto the windowpanes and grasses. Considering last year's mild winter, and this year's scorching summer (many dead from the heatwaves, fires all through western America and Europe), what seemed the beginning of yet another premature, severe season was troubling for many. At least it was some relief from the past year's heat, but could possibly be even more damaging. South England had fallen quiet, caught off-guard when their comfortable conditions abruptly ceased. This was replaced by the slow, glacial invasion of something that was once relegated to poorly managed indoors. Being that they were enjoying a summer that was quite alright in their area, this came as a surprise. The surprise, however, quickly wore off, and like animals in migration, all the cheer had gone south, leaving behind half-lidded eyes and slack faces. Living corpses of the English shuffled in sparse numbers during the day, and by night, the streets were deserted.

Nights ago, it was mostly quiet, only the winds somewhere an ignorable distance away. In placidity, it whispered, an ambient background to the chill-fever nychthemerons. One night, a few nights before tonight, it became more audible. The wind whistled, meek and retentient. After, it spoke somewhat, through its teeth, browsing the closed storefronts in small breezes. Then, it was blowing aloud, making the reeds and flags animate, interwoven gusts roving around the metropolises and countrysides. The next day is when it began to pick up a slight howl, and from there, the wind was a punk. Balloons, spare papers, and hats were snatched from the hands and heads of huffing irritables, mood fouled by the weather and even moreso by the theft of their aerodynamic possessions. The gales were racing up and down the streets, no longer a distant thing to forget about. Everyone became a querulous shut-in, except those employed to essential businesses, who were required to continue. This included hospitals, whose each and every doctor had a unifying trait: the desire to forego the Hippocratic oath, stab their patients, and go home. No kind of outbursts had occurred... yet.

The liverishness was running high, some kind of unnatural fever brought in by the winds. However, there were a few exceptions, and a few was nothing short of literal. 

One of them was David Gilmour, who was unnerved by his wife's, and everyone else's, dark-faced perpetuity. When he looked out the window, he saw nighttime storm clouds, and nothing else, and couldn't grasp why this was occurring. Currently, Polly had locked the door to one of the rooms (he was too anxious to check, as if he made too audible of a footfall, he'd hear animalistic yowling upstairs that could only be spelt as,

' _AUUUGGGAUGUACKKKKAAAAAAAASHADDDUFAAAUCKKKAUUUUPPP!!!!!',_

and unfortunately, nearly every step he made was 'too audible'). Feeling like he could be brutally slaughtered at the next infraction, he was frozen. When he first observed this, he called 999, and the conversation went something like this:

"This is... ugggh.. some...hospital..." A pause, which began to extend into concerning territory. David began to puzzle and worry, and barely breathed into the phone,

"Are you oka-"

"I GIVE UP ON LEBEN, WAS ZUM FICK DO YOU WANT, YOU-"

What followed was a blue streak that shot to the sun and back, the equivalent of five minutes' worth of insults in equally broken German and English. This ended with a deafening crack and dial tone.

Police... he tried to call the police.

"Excu-"

"If one more person fackin' requests help, I'll blow my feckin' brains out. Over the phone, you salmon-shagger! We live in Hell, don't ye see-"

David was the one to hang up there.

Seeing the mass psychosis of his locality, David began to contemplate accessing the coat in the closet, that way he could exit this pressure-cooker madness and walk somewhere else. Glued to the window, David observed the streetlamps outside were the only normal thing. Shining their consistent, nightly beam, directed down on the ground, they were so... ordinary. Earlier today, a bird smashed into the window, scaring the normal placidity out of David. He knew it was that exact moment that anxiety overtook him.

David was only staring out the window, as he sometimes did when contemplating absolutely nothing. The regular, vague scenery incited him to think of memories, which became more defined the longer he id. At that particular moment, he was thinking of R- 

A pale, beige streak, raced downward and slammed into the window with a loud _THUNK._ A piercing stab of adrenaline electrocuting David as a brief splay of feathers was seen, fully flattened against the pane, which then dropped out of view. He had no time to alert his wife as to what just happened, and in a blur navigated the vertical maze of his house, descending to the sidewalk as fast as he could. Each step attempted to be deft, and he set his shoes down on the cement, turning the entrance corner. Unfortunately, he had to behold the small creature, which he was hoping had flown away. He trotted over in a few swings, and bent down to look at it. He felt his expression turn to that of pity. It was a greyish-fawn dove, one side of its face turned towards David. Its showing eye was half-obscured by its lower eyelid, which had risen, making the bird look like it was squinting in severe pain. Its neck was compressed and reared into its body, a wing twisted to fully display every feather. Its breast rose and fell in heaves, its slim beak hinging open and not-quite closed. Salmon-scaled talons began to close in on themselves, as the bird made a thin lament of suffering.

  
David would not dare touch it. Its death was inevitable, nothing could save it. He didn't even want to save it if he could, there was something integrally petrifying about it he couldn't, at all, put his finger on. The bird was foretelling something, pure, concentrated forewarning. A looming presence, whose shadow only grew by the day.

When he was certain that it had perished, he picked it up. It was small enough to hold in one hand, but the limpidity of its body and fading warmth reminded him of the numerous pets and people he had watched fade away. Maybe, he thought, a brutal slaughter was less affecting than something gradually dying. It would be easier to cope with if the dove had died on collision, or at least its second impact with the ground. This would be much more difficult, as he had witnessed the process in slow motion.

  
The bird had subtle iridescence on its neck, golden and slightly rosy-tinged. Two oblong black spots, half-fused, were marked on the intersection of its head and neck. All of these subtle details didn't matter, however, as its inevitable decay would leave the dove a skeleton.

David walked to a random point on his plot, dug a hole, inserted the dead avian into it, and removed evidence of its existence by kicking the voided dirt back into the hole.

The wind picked up, higher than it was already. The sound was on the verge of sounding anguished, faint cracks starting to split the howling. Any more, and it would be the sound of one having their bones crudely split lengthwise, and subsequently the torture of bone marrow extraction.And yet, the wind was not like the waves. It continued to elevate, until David was convinced he was hearing _actual_ screaming, which was not implausible, in the fact that the entirety of England had seemed to have gone mad. His uncertainty was escalated, until it was harpooned when he heard _laughing_. Maniacal, raving cachinnation, and he focused on the street below.

_God, what IS that?!_

A hallucination? That couldn't be real; it was a strange, refractive smear, white, red, and little sprinkles of various colours... some foggy, misty sprite... 

...and it's gone.

David prayed that he wasn't going mad, too.

The desertlike, swirling, sweeping wind was all there was. It skirted across the street, curved up the buildings. The flags that flew above the cities were indicative of the state of the people, no longer animated and jubilated by the wind; but a whipping, frenetic, confused mess, a jarring blur of colours. The otherworldly, schizophrenic existence that had befallen the region was isolated, entrapped, and procured by the wind. But the wind was only a byproduct of the internal craze that was the universe bending and warping; crying out to returned to normal. But the impossible that was done couldn't be undone. Therefore, the universe couldn't be regulated as it pleaded. The struggle between equilibrium and radical, spontaneous change was still ongoing, however. Although balance was fighting for the scales of reality, it was all futile. The counterpoises didn't realise that they were going to be replaced in some way, as all the other counterpoises had before them.

An unholy screech penetrated the wind's emptiness, filling the street, this being a disoriented row of flats, with jarring noises. The time was midnight, and people stirred, supremely confused as to what was occurring.

  
Near a nursing home, a very old man started, mentally grasping at strands as to what the noise was--

"The Stukas are coming!" he hollered faintly, hoarsely, and fell out of his bed. Which then, he crawled under, hoping that this would insure him. He was not heard.

  
An equally ancient Irish woman in some rooms over awoke, and immediately began to sob, as she interpreted this as a banshee (whose cries were portended death).

  
Another woman was awoken by her aviary of budgerigars, who began panicking at the hawk-like cry. A cacophony of buzzy alarm-shrieks filled the house, _CHEET-CHEET-CHEET,_ enough to drive anyone raving.

  
Swiftly, the street was alive with different noises than the one that had started it all, but nobody dared go out, with all their different assumptions as to what this noise was. Nine-nine-nine was called, alternately the police and the hospitals, who had fortunately gotten over their bizarre spell of irritability. The noise stopped, at a sudden point, but 999 were on their way.

  
An ambulance and a few police cars arrived, all from one direction, and they stopped in the middle of the road. Residents peered anxiously out of their windows, attempting to behold what the source of the noise was. And it seems that the police had found it, for it was lying in the middle of the road. As the cars rolled up, the headlights gradually illuminated an entity.  
The first thing that everyone could see was white, it was mostly white. It was a person, clothed in all white, either like an angel or a patient from a sanatorium. The second feature observed was there was blood, lots of blood. The individual, as it became apparent, had spontaneously collapsed. This meant that either they were unconscious or dead. Much of the white was stained a startling carmine, and this sinister red was only continuing to consume the white. The third feature was the strangest. This was more difficult to scrutinise from one's balcony, but the people standing in their doorways or looking out first-floor windows could see it in much more defined detail. What seemed to have caused this terrific haemorrhaging was dozens of impalings from... shards of ceramic. Porcelain and glass were notable, but what seemed to be the most numerable were these colour-variable, high-gloss fragments that marred the face into a grotesque mask of chunky flesh.

Thus, the police withdrew, and the paramedics launched into an evaluative frenzy. Their conclusion: this person was still alive, despite the massive amounts of blood. So, they dragged this visual insanity onto a stretcher and drove it away.


	2. Lapis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever wanted to read about someone getting stuck in a body refrigerator in the same breath as uh David Gilmour magic dreams and uh Resurrection™?!  
> Look no further.

A gleaming pair of forceps was held high above, the illumination of the surgical lighting reflected in a concentrated glare. The patient already dead, and the removal of these foreign objects had to be executed deftly if the recipient of these variegated impalings was to be preserved. The forceps bit down on a large, red fragment of ceramic, the exposed edge revealing translucent white clay under the glaze, polished bone under satin drapes. Placing it on a sample tray with a clatter, the surgeon set their sights on the next piece. Tenuously, the foreceps descended again, the operator of this medical instrument wondering as to how and why such a numerable amount of large, semi-blunt objects could have completely penetrated this person. Less questionable were the much thinner shards of glass and porcelain, but then another question arose to supplant the dismissed other: In what way did such a quantity enter?

Judging by the superficially-slicing, lateral cuts on the body's hand, the forensic analysts had determined that the patient had willingly mutilated themselves. Combining this with the initial reports of screaming, it seems that the owner of this body had experienced some kind of mania. Checking for external signs of anything, the analysts observed severely dilated pupils, which minimised the irises to a dark brown rim. A blood test showed no drugs, but an unlivable amount of serotonin and endorphins floating around. Despite that bodily fluid tests usually weren't credible for chemical detection concerning the brain, a later dissection of the organ revealed the blood-brain barrier was acutely corroded. This led the forensic pathologists to believe that this bizarre case was a matter of neurological disease.

The face was beyond identification. All there was, was exposed flesh, like pulverised raw salmon, the nasal and vomer bones just peeking out from behind the mauling. In possibility, later they could attempt facial reconstruction or DNA testing. In the delineated timeline, this quiet frenzy of events, there were examinations, there were surgeries, there was photographing, and even a case of nauseation and its predictable follow-up. But most of it was in vain, really, as the assembly didn't achieve much out of it. It couldn't lead to an investigation, there was no life to be saved. So, their last option was that of identification. Swabbing a sample from the corpse's mouth, it was taken to the lab to investigate a match.

Meanwhile, the corpse was placed in a morgue. There, it idled, a senseless waste of human life. The corpse wouldn't be able to realise that, as it couldn't. It was dead, and any inhabiting consciousness had already gone to those brutal caverns of permanent death. There was no soul to linger, no legacy to care about. But, Fate went fishing for a reason. In the water of these places were pools of screaming, hot hell and holes that fell far down. It was delayed, unfortunately, as it found that these caves did not contain the specimen it was seeking.

So, it went to Greece. In the municipality of Μυτιλήνη, a woman was sweeping her small house, frowning at the dust pointed out by the light filtering in. She disliked these motes almost as much as tourists- who, no matter how much one would sweep up, would still float around in the air and re-settle. The swish of the broom continued, she listening to the still-mortifying Καλαμοκανάς plurality outside. She remembered precisely when it had started- two-twenty-two A.M., on 7η Μαρτίου. That was the time when the birds transformed from an invisible species and background noise of nature, to the dreaded mouthpiece of demons.

First were the wings, a torrent of feathers beating the air so loud that it woke her. She had never heard such a thing in her life, besides an approximation in the form of pigeons.

How _they_ were not pigeons. _They_ consisted of multiple streamlined bodies, shell-pale and spectral in the dim light below, disappearing into dual pennons of the harsh shadow of silver. Their many wings blended into the night, an earthly and heavenly terror in its ultimate form. But not only an unspecified formation, not some miscellaneous flock of a large number. Nor were they the geese's v-formation, nor were they the starling's murmuration of a giant bird...

...But a wheel. A wheel that circled on no fork except a mysterious madness. When she realised this, is when the birds erupted into horrible sobbing. Sounds of anguish, sounds of agony, and causation of terror.

This din became a constant.

To get away from this, the woman we)nt to other towns in Λέσβος. The same birds were there, meandering in the marshes, and upon arrival, they (regular they, not _they_ ) startled her. She had barely noticed them before, but knew that they were always there, at least in the back of her mind. However, the screams of the birds of her municipality were replaced by puppyish yapping, and she could only wonder as to why. These birds, from Καλλονή to Ερεσός, were not solemn horrors that stalked the shallow waters and reeds, only innocent creatures.

Just as she was thinking about weeping birds, and with the background of these banshee-like screeches, came a rapid flutter, and a tap on her window.

And a sound vaguely like crying, the sound of a περιστέρι. But not the muted trilling of a τρυγόνι, but a non-trill, a drawn-out _whoo-ahh-hoo_ , _hoo-hoo_ , like an owl. But its softness told the woman it was a περιστέρι. She turned around, and was surprised to find a creature on her open windowsill. As she caught sight of it, it reclined into its feathers, legs disappearing. A creature seemed to have been made of the swirling motes of incited particles in the woman's house, it let out another one of its encoded calls.

Tentatively, the woman shuffled towards it, the περιστέρι not moving. It turned its head, a black anomaly on its forehead. That black anomaly blinked.

_Ένα τρίτο μάτι;_

She joined the screaming of the Black-Winged Stilts, and promptly fell dead.

Meanwhile, the dove flew off, setting its sights on the glittering Aegean. It knew exactly what it wanted to do, and that was go fishing. Although the dove wasn't anywhere near a skua, or cormorant, or a shearwater, it had all the capability necessary to complete this marine-correlated task. Already exhausted from the overtly-extended flight, it fought to continue, to get to its oceanic verge. Greyish wings burning, it ascended, first only in feeling- then they set aflame. The air screamed as the bird committed kamikaze in brilliant, fiery glory. It took much less time for the bird to hit the water than the effort it that it had taken to organic aviation, and went up in a small plume of steam on impact. How anticlimactic, one would think. Its fragile bones broke for the second time, and it felt the wind knocked out of its lungs (and all nine of its air sacs). The one thing the dove could do? Die, of course. Its body was bait for what lay beneath the glowing blue that caught the light, a self-written Asphodel for the inert memory, lying like a sunken treasure. Maybe it was similar to an Egyptian sarcophagus, each intricate detail, each concise layer a further encasement.

_And deep beneath the rolling waves, in labyrinths of coral caves; the echo of a distant time comes willowing across the sand, and everything is green and submarine._

As the dove floated, the breeze rapidly mutated into a gale, like when it had visited England to cause miscellaneous commotions. Its third eye pointed towards the sky, the bird's dying self witnessed an object appear midair, a silhouette of a relatively large bird which was frozen trying to resist the growing wind.Fate drifted upwards, and rode on the wings of this new bird... behold, an αλμπατρός. The dove, like the body, was now dead. Looking down on the old bird in the water, the phenomenon wondered how long it would take for a sea creature to notice it. Because, as soon as the aforementioned unspecification would consume this dove touched by Fate, it would inadvertently become a satellite. And then die, of course.

And when it did happen, Fate died, too. Its work was done.

David was freed from the acrimony he was facing, and walked out of his house for once. Polly had gone off somewhere to 'de-stress' from the forgetful confusion she was experiencing, and this was to David's relief. Just looking at her, the past thirtyish years they had been together were irrelevant, he only seeing (or rather, hearing) the howling creature behind the door. There was still a slightly sick feeling David got from looking at that discoloured patch of his front yard- dirt instead of grass, a single dark grey-and-white feather stuck atop it. He hastened his pace to get away from the residence.

The sky, unlike two days before, was firmly overcast, the familiar shades of grey bringing a general (not mass-psychosis) kind of brooding over the populace. Not David, however, who had other things to express and be concerned with, such as lots of worrying. As well as the clouds above, he was being swarmed by a cloud of pins and needles. An uneasy feeling that consumed the entirety of David's subconscious was physically manifested, ants crawling under his skin not too far from the pinpoint of what his somatic process was indicating. Maybe, he thought, he's haunted.

_(Yes, I Have Ghosts and They're Breathing Down My Neck Please Help)_

Or, maybe he was beginning to die and didn't know it. The specific sensation of terror found within death anxiety brushed by, like a cat's tail, fear purring in satisfaction at David's acknowledgement.

He stared up, the inspecificity of the sky causing corruptions in his vision to appear. Mist was beginning to come down, a faint, snowy drift that made the surroundings hazy, deepening his anxiety. Instead of submitting to his paranoia and glancing around, David focused on the sidewalk, which seemed to be the only stable thing in his sight. The mist became denser, a frosted look coming over his world. He would've liked to turn back, if it weren't for the dead dove in his yard, and poor associations with his place as of yesterday. So, David decided to continue indefinitely. Walking deeper into the obfuscation, he wasn't sure as to where he was going.

Something got to the body, some strange process was occurring. Not that anyone would be able to tell; as this body was still placated in the mortuary. Delays in DNA identification testing had surfaced, and higher priorities were stacked atop this case. Even if one of the morgue attendants did check on the corpse, they'd find nothing different. In fact, nobody on the Earth would be able to discern it if they tried. However, an integral switch had been flipped, and _it_ was really happening, what had been a breadcrumb trail now being paved. And now that this trans-cranial super-highway had been constructed, the post-mortem works could begin.

The next day, a finger twitched. This wasn't spontaneous electric stimulation that somehow had occurred inside a body freezer, but something even less likely. If the body was alive, it would have definitely felt a fantastically horrid burning, as if it were being incinerated from the inside. This was the process of the body defrosting itself, for to not be a tundra was the nature of the living human. Something would be apparent to people who had implanted the forensic photographs in their mind through vigorous examination or anyone who had been traumatised by the disfigurementation, looking now would puzzle them.

Meanwhile, Dave was alone in the rain. Holding an umbrella over his head, he once again exited in haste. Inevitably, he cast a glance at the plot... which had caught his eye for a sudden change. He turned and walked towards it, curiosity piqued. There was a plant there, too sudden in appearance to have grown over time. David frowned, then continued off into the downpour. As he walked, he could still hear the indistinct whispering which had joined him this morning, he hoping the spattering around him would make it inaudible. His dreams, or rather nightmares, had devolved into hours of phantasmagoria, the screams and hisses echoing in his head when he started awake. His mind spun around, still nervous as premonition lurked. As he hadn't gotten any sleep, only self-mental torture, he was jittery and pale, and further worried that he was going the way of the guitarist he had once replaced.

The body... the body was a whole different matter than the corpse it was. Anyone who had seen it previously would accuse mysticality or replacement, maybe just short-circuiting whilst attempting to explain it. Still, further complications with DNA testing- as there had been a string of petty crimes that led to murder, and the victim of that mystery was easily identifiable as having a human face. The same could gradually be said about the body in the fridge, who unlike the other corpses, had the internal temperature of a balmy Floridan winter, and circulation proportionate to hummingbird's torpor, twofold. The skin, previously affected by cyanosis, was turning greyish again.

However, it was still braindead.

That was not to be said about the next day, in which something happened. Like flint against a rock, a scintilla of something awoke within the grey matter. The wave of fire across the phosphorus tip of a match, an ember landing amid a field of parched, withered grass.

The voices were getting louder, harsher, and with a night of intentionally lying awake, David felt like death.

Tension was in the air on the fourth day of this body being left in the morgue. The air was nearly static, wind creeping along in silence. A thin layer of white blocked the blue, but some tears of sun showed through. A memory of summer's warmth set a feeble smile as it touched the land, giving hope and disappointment alike. Faint wind-manipulated instruments, tubular bells of metal and clinking glass, resounded in a trailing spirit. David, unable to go on further without any sleep, subjected himself to the jumble of noises and images that came with his affixed REM. This time, it wasn't just vague, frightening blurs, but the theme of dead things; which all blurred into one another. Meanwhile, he heard the overlaying of a sequence of noise, numbers heard on radios, more indistinct whispering, a distant flock of screams, and what sounded like a dove imitating an owl.

His dreaming heart stopped when he heard a voice.

"Dave?"

Suddenly aware of himself and his surroundings, his immediate vision was uncloaked from the images. He took an imagined step back, nearly falling over. Trying to say something in return, the sound did not come. Instead, only mouthing wordlessly into the darkness, the lightness, devouring his response. Turning in a circle, David saw nothing and no one. He tried to remember why he had been so startled by this voice. It was just... just another noise.

But it was a distinct noise.

_So was the cooing dove._

But it was a human noise.

_So were the screams._

But it was a human voice.

_So were the numbers._

But it called his name!

_...It doesn't matter._

It was familiar. Too familiar, and yet David couldn't remember how or who. All was silent, as the voice stopped itself, the voice stopped all noises, including David's speech. He tried making a footfall, but there was nothing, as the space he was in was purely relative. There was no anchor point to reference distance, no horizon, nothing but himself, which he could only extend as far as he was able. And, since he was already in his mind, the ringing one hears when there's nothing else to listen to was absent. Pure, sick silence.

"David?"

When he heard the voice again, it was a wash of temporary relief, of texture, of colour... then it was gone again. But knowing that it could possibly recur, he clung onto the last decibel that faded into the distance. David started forward, then backwards, then looked from each side- yet still, just a disorienting space of nothing. Brighter than the sun, yet darker than negative light, one superimposed over the other, but also vice-versa. A kind of Möbius strip laid out in three dimensions.

"David, are you there?"

He would've liked to affirm that, but his capability of communication was muted. Yet again, he did a frenzied surroundings check, through the usual three-hundred-and-sixty, but also upwards and downwards.

_Rien, rien du tout! Comme c'est frustrant!_

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, or a specific direction, or a vague area, or maybe David was talking to himself, and he didn't know it.

"Dave, say something! Where are you?"

Nowhere. He was nowhere, and he knew it. Unless...

One more time, this fourth time on the fourth day, he looked. Immediately, he spotted something, a non-polarised concept, and not only a concept, a subject. Not a setting, a subject.

David pointed at this speaker, and the words spilt.

"Who-"

"-are you?" He asked aloud, his own voice startling him as he woke up.

Dreaming. The corpse had been dreaming, but how was that possible? He couldn't be, he was dead. Or... how was that possible, especially when he was thinking right now?

These were the first thoughts of someone who was now living.

And, it was cold, negative Fahrenheit cold, as if he had been placated within a freezer. Attempts to move were already stiffening, veins turning to ice, and it was completely dark. As the corpse felt around, he realised that he was in... a coffin? A metal coffin, or something. He didn't know if he could breathe or not...

Oh, God of all gods. He could barely breathe, and panic was setting in. With absolutely no idea what was going on, he wondered if he should scream or contemplate on the notion that someone might be attempting to kill him.

He started thrashing like a fish, which made jarring noises of clanging metal. However, it was difficult to do so, as the cold bit him perpetually. Raising a half-thawed arm, he knocked on the side of this entrapment, the wild speculations running through his head. What kind of dystopia had he woken up to? Or, was it hundreds of thousands of years in the future, he an attempt of cryo-revivification or whatever sci-fi scenario this was?

"Hey! Who's there?!", A voice demanded, footsteps rushing in.

The dead man had a confusion of hope and fear, and tried to request help. However, it came out as a near-unintelligible shriek, which made him cough harshly.

_The FREEZER?!_

The diener was only on-guard, and as soon as they heard the commotion, the immediate suspicion was a group of punks trying to take someone for organ harvest... or whatever is it that one may do with dead bodies. But as they arrived, they found nobody, but definitely heard something. Metal on metal on metal, loud enough to have all the _other_ corpses turning in their grave. By that, it seemed that there was a live one here. With that racket straight from a bloodless hell, the diener mentally fumbled, and tried to locate the exact source of this.

"Are you stuck in the freezer?" they tried to communicate. A faint 'yes' spluttered from somewhere on the left side, the desperate banging turning to a directory tapping. 'Please', it said, further elaborating its disparagement.

The diener found that it seemed to be drawer no. 4, and wasted no time in opening it. Only to find that was the wrong one, and so they went to their other approximation of drawer no. 5. And so began the second life of the dead man.

The latter was incredibly relieved, to find that this was not a dystopia or a hundred/thousand years in the future, but rather... when? He would need to inquire. They were asking him who he was and how he got there, but he couldn't exactly remember.

"All I know is that I know David," he said.

"David who?" inquired his inquirer, the woman taking a mental evaluation on him.

"Gilmour, David Gilmour, that's who. He's not me, but I saw him." It seemed silly to elaborate on that, but he believed it was necessary.

"Saw him where?"

"Whilst I was sleeping. In a dream. A dream where I was dead."

She nodded.

Clipboard held out of view from the disoriented patient, she noted, _Patient may possibly have cognitive issues, memory only brings up 'David Gilmour'._

Considering the fact that he was fully clothed when they found him, they presumed that someone not of staff had put him in there. The diener and correlated doctors claimed that there was a grossly mutilated body in there beforehand, making the forensics team wonder even harder: Was there some kind of scheme here, where the body had been stolen and replaced with a potential witness? A witness who, in the mind of whoever was behind this, should've died?

It was all very dubious. This poor old hippie-looking man seemed to not have a clue as to what was going on, but it could be that he was concealing information. She asked him over and over, wording it differently, using all the psycho-verbal tricks of persuasion and self-admission, but he was just... blatantly oblivious. This man seemed to be a genuine amnesiac. 

As she was finalising her evaluation, she noticed that he was staring at the ceiling, a glassy look over his eyes.

"Richard," he said all of a sudden, face distorting in confusion. And then disturbance. "Wait, wait, wait, just a second..."

He scanned the room around him, the woman finding a chance to write this occurrence down. "My name is... er... I believe it's Richard, yes?"

"I'm not sure I know that," she replied indifferently. "Are you?"

"Yes, I think I have affirmed that in my head." He shifted uncomfortably, the original glaze over his eyes waning, seeming to be snapping out of whatever fog he was in. Placidity drained away to reveal the wringing of hands, and a new look of confusion slid onto his face. "My name is Richard, er, Richard Wright."

_The subject has gained awareness acutely, provides self-identification. Shows clear signs of confusion and nervousness._

She saw it, his constantly shifting expression, the pattern of crossing one leg over the other, undoing that, and then doing it vice-versa, and overall fidgeting were easily detectable signs of distress.

"Is David here?" he inquired with more retention, the psychiatrist not understanding if this Gilmour was the source of his anxieties in a negative anticipation or positive one.

"No, there's no David here," she replied.

"Have you ever seen him here? Do you know?" he further pressed, leaning forward.

"No."

"Do you possibly have any way to contact him?"

"Do you know his phone number?"

"Possibly, if you tell me what year it is."

"Clarify?"

"What's the year?"

She shrugged and told him. Wright's expression went blank in the briefest of short-outs. He opened his mouth for a second, and then closed it, leaning back to his previous position. However, it appeared he was prone to insubtlety, and well-detectable confoundment consumed him.

He looked up once again, then looked at the psychiatrist, crossing his arms and looking at her with a more neutral face.

"Okay," is all he said on that subject matter. "Now, can I call David?"

"We need to give you an examination first."

A crack of thunder startled David, entire body seizing at the loud noise. The voices had left him drained, but at least they were gone. However, the hauntedness was not. From this new dream emerged a new problem: a burning desire to know who this was. It was unnatural, as David knew that it was entirely fabricated, but the memory of the voice slithered along behind him. Something was preventing him from accessing the origin of its familiarity. Whether his own subconsciously imposed mental limitations, or an external force meddling with his mind, he couldn't think straight. Nor walk straight, kinesthesia having vacated to go get drunk at a bar somewhere.

So, with the shaky worldview in its uncertain place, David walked, and continued walking. He then turned around the other way, and continued until he was at a parallel point. Back and forth he'd do these long-distance paces. Chaos swirling in a washing machine is what best described this feeling. He felt a missing piece of the puzzle, waiting to be contextualised once he saw it. Or them. Or that. Or this? Which cycled over and over again in his head, a frothy liquidation mixed with soap.

His eyes had two sequences of looking straight, mid-left, and far-left, then returning to straight. It was sickening. All sick, all mad, all insane, and what was happening...?... There was a sound that dwindled his thinking.

David's phone was ringing.

Slipping it out of his pocket, he read the number, +44 122 321 6348. His mind continued twisting, but now with speculation. Who knew, it could be something important, and a distraction from the hounds of internal thoughts.

So, he picked up, and cleared his throat. "Hmm... uh, hello?"

"Are you David Gilmour?"

He could only wonder what this inquiry was for, but shrugged and nodded. Pausing, he realised that nonverbal cues would not transfer over phone lines, so he translated it to,

"Yes. What... owes the pleasure of this call?"

"Hello, this is Addenbrooke's Hospital Neuroscience Department, located in Cambridge, England. There's a patient here that would like to speak with you, claims he knows you... by the name of..." David heard some papers being flipped, "Richard Wright, can you affirm that?"

A feverish wave of confusion washed slowly over David, and yet again he elicited a nonverbal cue by leaning forward.

"Yes, yes.... uh..." He trailed off again, trying to process the situation. Eyes turning rightward towards the sky, he pressed his lips together, and descended his gaze leftward-downward, pulling his mouth right in scepticism. Rick was dead, so it would be straight cruelty for a fan or a delirious patient or someone who knew a David Gilmo _re_ , to call him. But David non-Gilmore was curious, so he didn't hang up. "Yes, I do know him," he affirmed with more certainty.

"As I said, he would like to talk to you. Are you willing?"

"Yes, yes."

"Give us a second... we'll be redirecting you to another phone line...-" An abrupt shut-off, and David was left in silence, the call timer still counting.

The jostling of an analogue phone.

"This is Dr. Powell of the Neuroscience ward, please state your request."

"There was a recipient who called me, informing me that Richard Wright had requested to speak with me. Is he a patient here?"

"Yes, he is."

"Could I ask, how and where did you find him?"

"The staff of the morgue-" David began to speculate wildly with that word, "-found him in one of the body refrigerators."

David grimaced. "Is he available?"

"Yes, let me direct you to his room..."

Silence again, then another analogue clatter.

"Dr. Rees here, please state the matter."

"I'm David Gilmour, apparently there's a Richard Wright here that would like to communicate with me." _A_ Richard Wright, haha. He wasn't taking this all too seriously, but it still made him feel slightly melancholy. Wallowing in the shallow waters of memories that seemed to happen not too long ago, brought back a man who was now dead.

The phone seemed to be turned away, as some muffled talking was heard. There was something that barely penetrated through, like a torch in thick fog. That being the Welsh accent of the doctor, and a different one, altogether...

No, David wasn't going to allow himself to have some wild fantasy about Rick being alive. But at least he'd talk to this person, and potentially inform them that it wasn't wise to imitate deceased friends.

"Mr. Wright is here now."

Still trying to shake off the strange feelings of impossible idealisation, David set his jaw. The sounds of the phone being passed caused the existence of his heart to become more pronounced, feeling slightly ill from the chemical anticipation.

"Hello?" he asked, the uncertain look on his face fortunately not visible. His right foot twisted on the ground, chafing the cement.

"David?" -felt an electric shock shriek through and wring him-

"David, are you there?"

That voice brought a deathly silence.

"...Yes."

That voice couldn't be mistaken.

David _couldn't_ mistake it. He knew that voice- in real life, over the phone, singing, laughing, and its silence.

But he would try to refute its illogicality.

"Did you have a dream?" the voice asked.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that," David replied, "But if you mean in literal, yes."

"Describe it."

What was this reality?

David described it.

The voice counter-described it...

...In further detail that David had not mentioned, but detail that he was aware of. Still unwilling to believe this was one of his closest friends, he did not mentally address the voice as the name that it overtly attributed to. He wasn't going to allow himself to be deceived, and subsequently stricken with disappointment.

"David, I know you don't believe me. But please, just... come over here. I honestly don't know what's going to happen."

Vulnerable as he was, David wasn't going to be that cold, turn his head away at a tiny spark of a prospect. This microscopic reality overshadowed by a freezing wall of doubt, and the overwhelming evidence of a thing called science, could easily be forgotten.

But still.

"I'll... I'll go," he says. "I'll be there."

They tied the conversation up in a ribbon of silence. After the tension, David breathed a goodbye, and hung up not a second after he said it.

Rick felt dejected. David didn't believe him at all, despite his surprise. The dead man regretted causing the inconvenience, but he acted in his desperation. Maybe it wasn't necessary, possibly he could just walk out of the hospital and get lost.

Hospitals were uncomfortable in all their stiffness, and it was made even worse by the information he casually gleaned off the psychiatrist- over a decade in the future?! Had everyone he knew went senile in the time he was... dead? All these possibilities without any knowledge incited distress, distress that boiled just under the surface. Rick had a hard time not inflicting the Welsh attendant with a flurry of questions, frequently eyeing the man to debate if he should.

He never thought he'd end up here. In the days of being an architect student, he passed by the building many times, but never anticipated being inside it. Some time ago, he had revisited Cambridge and was walking by the building with the other three. A cigarette hung out of Roger's mouth, which then fell to the ground, the man halting everyone with his hand and an acutely infuriated expression. Curtly, he bent down, picked it up, and inserted the cancer stick back into his mouth. For some reason, this caused everybody to laugh hysterically. And for another some reason, Rick still remembered this minor moment.

But what was Roger doing right now?


	3. Wieser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you hate highway excursions, this is going to be incredibly excruciating for you.

A trick of the light? Some visual deception?

That couldn't be. It couldn't be.

Now, anyone from the ages of 40-60 could be puzzling madly over a few _more_ grey hairs, but it isn't enough to get someone's head in a twist. No. That would require something extraordinary, something that would scramble the brain into bedazzled-blind conjecture.

Yes, his hair was turning grey, he beginning to wonder, if this happened at a constant rate, will I see brown strands?

The problem was, Roger Waters was a man in his late seventies, but he was seriously beginning to doubt that. His hair, not five days ago, and five years before that, was as white as a sheet of 8.5x11 office paper. Now, it could be bluntly stated that _no,_ it was not. A metallic Sharpie had been slashed across the page with great big capitals that said 'FUCK YOU.', in the fact that it made him confused, which Roger did not like to be in a state of. He would have liked to understand everything at it should be, orderly, logical, and explainable, the very nature of science and the universe itself. Conscious is all brain patterns! All feelings are some tofu-like substance being stimulated by chemicals that have no meaning! We should advocate for peace because of this, as war is purely meaningless! The working-lower-middle-class are pawns! Socialism has never been executed correctly, but as we have the resources now to do so, we should halt our capitalist decay! Some inexplicable thing shouldn't involve him personally, if it ever were to happen. To look for answers, he slithered into the walk-in-closet/secret universe of malice that was the Internet...

...Which is when his provider's nearest cell towers collapsed. All with the provider could hear the collective sigh of exasperation across Long Island, and some could hear the deafening crash. Roger displayed a mildly pained expression to no one.

Meanwhile, David Gilmour happened to be driving, and there was something in the backseat. This was a collective of his fears, doubts, and time-wastage problems, and just thinking about the irritability of this backseat driver made him grip the steering wheel harder. His thoughts were of an anxious nature, as they had been for the past few days, but especially now. He fought to keep himself within rationale, his pique and crumbling worry just barely containing a flood of crippling sentimentalism. He shook his head to clear it, that cough-syrup kind of feeling that continuously crept in and eroded his defence. David hadn't felt this cross, this depressed, and this nostalgic in years. Sickeningly nostalgic. Acidulously nostalgic. The front seat was empty, and that small hope, quashed deep inside his conscious, wondered if it would be occupied once he left Cambridge.

He wanted to forget the voice over the phone, it didn't work like that. Just because one heard a dead voice over the phone did not mean that they were alive again. Voices could be imitated; the dreams were only a coincidence. That was what David could try and affirm with himself: just a coincidence, an elaborate scheme of some kind. For whatever reason, instead of a straightforward, yet impossible answer.

Being so absorbed in his thoughts, and with the plainness of the countryside slipping by, he'd only been looking half-consciously. But a stirring occurred when he began to recognise things. Of course, he'd been back and forth from London to Cambridge a hundred thousand times, but Cambridge and its approaching surroundings were always armed with a wake-up slap. When David was given the hand across the face, he came to full awareness of what exactly was located out the window. No traffic, fortunately. There was a plain blue sign; that of which read: Newmarket (paragraph space), Norwich (paragraph space), A11 (paragraph space), and 12m (They didn't care to add the dash indicating half a mile, could as well be twelve metres), and a simplified infographic of the diverging M11 and A11. Another blue sign a few seconds later; that being 'Works unit only', and to its left a left-upwards-pointing arrow. After that, a mess of signs, those with words reading 'Except authorised vehicles' and 'End of motorway regulations'. The trees sprung up all of a sudden, coming to the forefront instead of lingering some few dozen yards away. David had to look back to take the first of diverging roads near the approaching city, a sign directing him to the proper continuation of the A11. As he was on the left side of the road, he only had to keep straight. The light briefly flickered into shade as he went under an overpass, and went out again, stands of trees on both sides isolating the diverged road. This was only for a few seconds, however, as it reduced and cleared to reveal the soulless grassy expanse on the left, and a field of white flowers on the right (cut by the other road). The M11 was curving right, car going under a broader and longer overpass than the previous.

As he went out, David's observations were cut off when he saw a sign that presented the reality of it all:

Cambridge

A1301

(and less relevant details underneath)

Diverging road infographic, 12m. Although this wasn't the route he was taking to the city, the name itself made his breath shudder. He wouldn't think about it. He wanted to just get there, and get out. But in reality, it was that tiny speculation that dragged him cross-city, on the road, through the countryside, past birds and flowers and shadows to a haunted town of memories. And what could be...

...No. He already self-mandated not to think about that.

The trees closed in for another long stretch. When they broke, it became apparent the car was travelling on an overpass. For a split second, for a narrow few metres, one could see for a few miles on either side. The dream was lost, the forest revealed its ribcage. Aspens and poplars, tall, thin, and densely clustered, hills downsloping for the skeletal trees to disappear into a disquieting darkness. Signs on either side contained an infographic indicating the end of the freeway, subtitle '1 mile'. The intimidating woods abruptly cut off, reduced to patchy shrubs and smaller trees, flower spikes and grasses growing amongst them. The metal sidelines from either parallel road narrowed in on the flora, cement and tar trimming it down to the narrowest slice... and then nothing. The mid-section was a negative space, the two roads both seen but unable to merge, separated by the fact that they were on stilts.

Sign: Services (paragraph space), 4 miles ahead.

The left side of forest gave out, pushed back around a mile or half, to more grass. David's spine shivered, as he remembered that behind that last stand was the River Cam. Another sign assaulted him with reminders that he really was going to Cambridge, and the closer he came, the more inevitable it would be.

_The existence of this trepidation is uncertainty. I know it._

David pursed his lips, trying to suppress any thoughts of sentiment. He was, subconsciously, believing the caller. Seeing another splitting of the road ahead, he prepared himself to completely cancel this traversion, take the regular route through the A1301 and turn around. He shut his eyes for a split second, and found he was not turning, still on the M11. Still towards the concept of the unfathomable. His face became expressionless, the twin signs of end-of-freeway signs signalling he was in a permanent affixation, a one-way ticket to the end of the world. His thoughts were blank; the only thing in existence the grey road, the car's speed animating its white lines into wavering. The foliage became a featureless blur of various shades of green.

Sign, now verdancy-coloured:

A11, in contrasting gold, indicative that the M11 had transformed into the road to nowhere.

Newmarket 16

Thetford 36

Norwich 63

It didn't matter if the information was irrelevant or not. David was going to this hospital, and he was going to see for himself who this was. An invisible track was set, and it wouldn't misguide the car on a wrong exit, betray it with a wrong turn, or direct it to somewhere non-nothing. Trees with wide-spanning branches overtook both sides. Sign, another one of the green ones: Services, 3 miles ahead. To the left, an opening to a field, containing scattered trees, various paths, and orderly hedges. Gone, blocked again. However, the right side opened up, exposing a parallel road, cars travelling in the opposite direction. The stand of trees on the left was once again ulcerated by the same field, then both sides were consumed again. Right side opened again, parallel road seen again, left side broadening for a semi-truck pullover area. The left side remained broadened with a small slope of grasses. Right side completely opened, left side closed with taller trees. Trees became further heightened, right side closing along the parallel road. The road seemed to settle for this scenery. Wooden fences separated the woods from the road, roadside populated with the same white flowers. The road was curving. White-on-green sign, infographic of a third lane joining another two. Under an overpass. Black-on-white sign: Fourwentways services, 12m, various pictographs indicating aforementioned services.

Another overpass, another third-lane-merge sign. This sign becomes a reality, as a third lane springs from out of view to join the lane driven in. The first of large signs is two of them.

Sign one, black on white:

Cambridge

Haverhill

A line and a downwards arrow.

Sign two, white on green:

Norwich

Newmarket

And another gold-type colour A11 to the right of them, another line and two down arrows on either side of the sign.

The shade flickered again, but this time it was a tied-arch pedestrian bridge. The same large sign, with the two smaller signs posted upon it, presented itself again. David merged into the third lane, almost mindlessly.

... _Almost mindlessly..._

Eyes darting to the small, rectangular sign on two stakes, that of a left-pointing upwards arrow, reading:

A1307.

Multiple green signs showed a pictograph of a roundabout, smirking at the mistake he's just made. That mistake? He's gone in the right direction.

Two identical white signs, blue circles, red borders and x-crosses, led him into the roundabout. Arrow-shaped signs, with patterned black-and-white chevrons, guided him left, and he, in his third lane, continued on this circling left.

Cambridge Road. He was on Cambridge road.

A sign told him, 'Single file traffic'.

The road curved slightly, and as it straightened out, hedges appeared, lining both sides of the now-two lanes. Sign: Triangular, white with red border, black exclamation mark, rectangular white/black border subtitle sign saying 'Pedestrian crossing'. Beige fields to the left lay just beyond the hedges, and came into direct view when the latter receded. A left-turning road went into Babraham, which the car passed by. More trimmed bushes and tan fields to the right, the left holding trees which were already shedding their leaves. A few evergreens rose up, only to fall to a monotonous line of immaculate shrubs.

David decided to stop reading the signs, as they now said 'Cambridge' at any given chance.

Lightpoles and power lines arose out of the ground, and David approached the long-portended roundabout. The very roundness of it was embedded into the brick, painted with the black and white chevron line. And of course, the great big circle in the middle, tangle of metal stakes stabbing it as the signs attempted to implicate everything that was nonverbally necessary with this motorway phenomenon.

Taking the left half-circle, everything suddenly became slower and smaller, there now an authentic sidewalk replacing the third lane. The cables of the power lines disrupted the vertical pattern of the trees in their two-stringed weave. The trees on the left disappeared, there now a flat green field behind more of those box-shaped plants. The first house was a brick cottage, followed by many similar-looking ones. Human involvement became increasingly distinguished, exits to establishments like Copley Hill (whatever that was) appearing, the area becoming less forested and more grassy. The road split for the third time, David staying on his third left. David was now on Babraham Road, which would offer one another chance to ditch Cambridge for Barbraham, but he was certain not to enact upon his fear. The road began downhill, options of turning either way dismissed. His continuation: straight, surrounded by vast stretches of green, with no interruption from differing plants for a good distance, a view of descending curvature. When fully descended, thickets appeared on the right, which were then walled in by blackish fencing. Fourth divergence of the road, still staying left. Having seen a hyperbolic-sounding amount of 'Park-and-Ride' signs since the roundabout, David saw an electronic sign, which read, 'FREE PARKING (paragraph space), A QUICKER ROUTE INTO CAMBRIDGE'.

A circular sign finally established a definite speed of 40, whether that be kilometres or miles... he couldn't tell. A glimpse of suburbia was followed by another roundabout, which meant another semicircular left, another mess of signs, and another straightening.

The Cambridge Audi... the Cambridge Audi...

Oh, no. He was already here. The car dealership was gone in a flash, but David's sudden fear was not. He kept on driving, but wanted to stop. He needed to take a breath, and that meant...

That meant... He couldn't think.

Red brick walls drew attention to the various homes there, the countryside plants relegated to confused cover. Here were the true outskirts of Cambridge, which would lead to the in-skirts, which would lead to...

_I'm too close, it's too late._

...downtown.

A diversity of plants impossible in the wild clashed in the little growing spaces they had, spilling over walls and jostling each other in the wind. The trees were leaning inwards, overarching the now-street. A tight three-way intersection meant traffic lights, accommodatingly green and green for David to get through. For the street he was behind, it was still the A1307. When the was turning the intersection, it was Babraham Road. And now, with a faint feeling inside, it became Hills Road. A set of traffic lights illuminated green again, David not wanting to pause to think. Something was changing, shifting, in his subtle dread. He could feel it in the surroundings, and he already knew what was coming. A sudden turn ahead, and the town unravelled right before him. The streets, like the signs on the roundabout, became a tangle, and he took two lefts. A slight rightwards kink in the road was all he received, another speed limit sign ordaining him to slow to the vague speed measurement of twenty. A blue sign instated that this was a one-way direction.

_May as well be metaphorical, I suppose._

Sign, white on red:

Accidents and Emergency.

David's heart leapt into his throat, and became lodged there. He was here. Driving slowly, trepidatiously, eyes widening slightly and scanning all peripheries... The dull buildings around seemed to loom like skyscrapers. He was in a hospital complex; there was no leaving until he enacted upon what he came here for.

A first certain right, then another, followed by a left. And then, a full circle around the parking complex as he attempted to find the entry, temporarily relieving the fear with a delinearising anticlimactic moment. But when he did, it returned, making his musculoskeletal system turn to boiled collagen. Attempting to shake the weakness off would take more effort than he had, the entrance now consuming him, turning and turning in an upwards spiral past a multitude of cars. The lightheadedness was encroaching upon David's ability to drive, and simultaneously trying to look for parking spaces was not a positive combination in the slightest.

However, his salvation came on the second floor of the garage, a negative space between a blue car and red one, David taking the wheel with increased resolution to try and wedge it between these automobiles. This coordinated action took a tenuous minute, the sickness making his head spin. He took his left hand off the wheel, shifting the gear stick to neutral and twisting the key, the car engine went silent.

Looking at the jingling set of metal apparatuses hanging off the ring, and the car key between his thumb in forefinger, David took that breath. It did little to help, except in its unsteady manner indicate that he was overly anxious. Was there any reason to be so unsettled, so nervous?

His expression suggested that he was searching for answers to that, as if the question imposed a state where he was in a self-conversation. Unlocking the car, he took his right hand off the wheel and opened its door. The getting-out-of-car procedure was executed with little haste. When David found himself upright, he shut the door and locked the car.

He took the stairs to the ground floor, a downward spiral of concrete steps, flight after level after flight, leaning on the rail as crippling apprehension divulged itself in wasting him further. He came out of the parking lot onto what was technically a bridge, a few metres of it suspended over a downsloping road and connecting to the main sidewalk. He emerged on the side of the latter, and looked both directions in a bit of a daze. He was to go to his right to get to reception...

_What am I doing?_

David scoffed slightly as he realised the ridiculousness of the situation. Here he was, bones all gelatinous, having driven an hour and a half because of a phone call from this hospital. Additionally, because there was a chance that... that...

Losing his resolve to scorn at the mere attempt of mentioning the concept, David was silenced. He turned right, as he was supposed to, gazing at the dull reddish sidewalk. Passing brick walling from the building to his right and a bike rack set up there, he began wringing his hands. There were more bike racks, which inexplicably gnawed at his nerves. He found himself taking another fruitless breath, and another, trying to console himself with respiration, until he realised he was hyperventilating. The voice came back all of a sudden in all its detailiature, David seeing near-tangible visualisations of Richard. In reaction, he looked down and put a hand over his eyes, backing up and leaning against the wall. This was not happening, this couldn't be happening, it was such an overreaction!

With a rush of frustration, David tried to shake these overwhelming emotions off him, and got off the wall. Irritation shoved him forwards, past the three pines in wide, shallow, concrete barriers that lined the sidewalk, past the bluish-blackish reflective windows that warped his reflection, past railings and more bikes and bushes. He huffed towards a pigeon, who was startled into flight. Making his final strides towards the entrance of Addenbrooke's Hospital, he made a final left, some employee standing outside in a neon-yellow vest. David then rid of his frustrations, trying not to look suspicious as he went by, and subsequently in. A revolving door stood in front of him. Without his anger, he felt the horror creeping back in. Standing there, he stared absently through the glass.

_This is what I've come to. Here is where I was supposed to go. I am here now._

Shaking his head, he interacted with the revolutionary entry, and found himself walking on the inside of the hospital. The unsettling atmosphere came over him, putting its clawed hand on his shoulder and leading him in. Iodoform and other disinfectants mingled with the fainter scents of flowers and... the red and regurgitated bodily fluids. There were mechanical clicks and beeps, the drone of ventilation, and the murmur of people, in this context perturbing ad to what their discussions could be. Worst of all, the line. The line was long, and something David did not want to do was wait. Not because he was a haughty prick (ahem, errr, Roger), but because his nerves were frayed, and the desire to leave was burning. The only thing that was keeping him here was the fact that his feet were planted on the linoleum with such conviction that they refused to move, unless if David was going further up the line. He had his will, and could easily walk out, but the state of it all entrapped him. There were people in front of him, and already an increasing amount behind him. He engaged in a staring contest with a wall clock (reading 14:22), listened to questionable sounds coming from somewhere within the hospital (gargling, screaming, hollering that may or may not have been the word 'SCHNEIDER!!!', et cetera), and looked at the people sitting in chairs, reading magazines or the papers. He tried to distract himself in any way to preserve his composure, even if it was just for this receptionist. There was a small side worry of being recognised, but he didn't show his face that often, so that concern was more trivial. 

The fluorescent lights seemed to grow brighter with each minute that passed, the slight chill of the hospital deepening further into cold. Looking down. Looking up. Looking at the back of the neon green raincoat of the man in front of him. Looking down at his own shoes, which were plain black. He observed the frequent handling of bouquets, blood-coloured roses, white chrysanthemums, green hydrangeas, and even some tulips, which were not in season. The neon moved to the right, and out somewhere, David following the colour as it exited somewhere else, returning his gaze to find only wood. Realising what was happening, he looked up, making eye contact with the receptionist, who quite frankly looked dead.

"Welcome to Addenbrooke's Hospital, please state your request," they droned, David recognising them from over the phone, as they sounded exactly the same. Anyone would assume the flat alteration in voice would be distortion, but in this case, apparently not. David cleared his throat nervously.

"I'm here to take a patient into custody," he replied. "Uh... I'm David Gilmour, looking for Richard Wright."

With no immediate response or change in their face, David feared they might not be taking him seriously, but then they moved. Accessing a computer, harsh blue light illuminated the receptionist's waxy face, making it look even more lifeless. Clicking and typing a bit, then turning to some clipboards and flipping through various pages, they nodded to themselves.

"Go take a left, past the D2 ward into the corridor, which will be signposted as the F and G wards, then take the lift or stairs to level three, where Ward R3 will be signposted, neuroscience. The patient will be in the waiting room, the third one over on the left. Got that?"

"Yes," David replied, waiting a second longer for the receptionist to have any further word. With the following silence, he hastily exited, mentally thumbing through the information he was just given. 

A horrible shudder snaked through him as the fear sensed he had no further reason to retain it. He felt short of breath, and it caught in his throat. Once again, everything felt cartilaginous, the nausea making him pause on the corner of turning left. Biting his lip, David resumed his walk, which felt like the descent into Tartarus. The hall of D wards was half-lit, greyish and anonymous, whatever grievances or joys going on behind the doors there unknown to him. Seeing D2 and signposts for the F and G wards, he took a left. More silence, vast and overbearing. Considering that the receptionist's acceptance of his visitation as tangible, there had to be at some audacious person posing as _the dead keyboardist_ in here. The mere existence of this person created mixed feelings of outrage and melancholy in David, not understanding how heartless one could be to do this.

The stairs presented themselves.

David froze.

He froze in glaciers of fear, fjords of terror, icebergs of horror, hailstorms of dread, a Greenland of anxiety, and an Antarctic of worry. 

That flicker of hope dimmed further.

He ignored the lift, wanting to delay himself further. He didn't want to be completely wrong, completely snuffed. So, up the stairs he went, either his stairway to Heaven or stairwell to Hell. He'd see an angel up there, or a demon down there...

He passed Level Two.

Most likely, it was the fire and brimstone he was going to see. And despite the fact he still had his will, he was already had Pandora's box in his possession, he was Schrödinger's cat and Schrödinger simultaneously. How could he not? It was irresistible to anyone.

He was at Level Three.

David was nearly gone as he came onto the last step of the stairs. This was the preliminary, the penultimate step. He could turn back now, even if he had gone this far...

He took the last step up, and he couldn't bring himself to leave anymore. Looking left, the dead and bright white hall stretched away, further distancing itself via David's disorientated perception. He stood there, and contemplated standing there for eternity. Unable to bring his eyes to the clear indicator of where he was supposed to go, he yet again looked down, where he had always gone in times of uncertainty. There were his shoes, and as long as he was grounded one way or another, it would be fine.

_It will be fine. I'm all right._

He felt a feverish chill wash over him, twisting his foot on the linoleum. Looking up, he saw the sign:

R3.

A ringing in his ears; the revolution of the hall like a 45 record, mind floating in the Dead Sea. He approached the R3 ward vividly feeling the process of dying.

From here, he opened the doors, or door- he wasn't sure anymore- and noticing another human being, forced himself to snap out of it.

"Yes, er, hello," David said as he shook his head, trying to rid of the surmounting intensity of his afflictions, "D-Do you have... Richard Wright here?"

"Yes," he heard the doctor say, but couldn't look at them, too busy trying not to reach a critical state, the point of no return. "I heard from reception that you came. He's in the waiting room, the next door over."

David nodded, the headache screaming as he began to hear overlapping noises, a nightmarish collage of sound. He began shuffling away, impossible emotions and sensations roaring, a tidal wave of dove corpses, fire ants consuming their eyes, broken wings, broken dreams-

-And a door. A door, just a door.

Twist, went the handle, and the slab of wood drifted outwards on its hinges. Peering into the room, David saw souls of the hospital, various people sitting there idly, intrigued by his entrance, but no longer. Except... for one, out of the corner of his eye.

A vivid auditory hallucination filled in the silence...

_I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye_

_I turned to look..._

David's eyes darted and affixed on this entity, something about it making his brain misfire. Turning his head to give it full recognition-

"Dave?" it asked.

It stood up, made up of a million foreign concepts impossible to process, working in synergistic conjunction. Why? What was it?

It was life. Or rather, _a_ live.

David couldn't speak, malfunctioning as he attempted to complete the procedure of conceptualisation.

Dark cyan caught the florescence, like the ocean of a storm. Like a night sky affected by light pollution. Like... like...

" _Rick?!_ "


	4. Narzisse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Der Selbstkonflikt eines Pferdes.  
> Papagei trifft Katze.  
> And David? He's just trying to get by.

This embrace made his heart sick, made him instantaneously regretful for all doubt that had vacillated in and out of this mystifying crisis of his. It couldn't possibly be a dream, yet its circumstances were so like it. It was deeply unsettling to feel the touch of someone dead, much less someone dead touching him back, in an awkward and socially improprietary intertwining. In a hospital. In a ward with other patients. For some reason.

David retracted, and stepped back with tears of confusion in his eyes.

"What?" was his first inquiry to this impossible occurrence, a permutation of reality, whatever it was.

"...Hi, Dave..." the anomaly responded, the voice not heard in the negative space between this its living and death. David hadn't heard or seen some people in over a decade, but one of his coworkers, one of his closest friends? That was important, too important, and then he was crying.

Which felt awkward, as this should've been a composed moment, but David found himself unable to procure mental stability.

...What's this reaction?

Rick was hoping that the year told by the psychiatrist was just a joking hyperbole, but David here wouldn't be having this reaction. Strange enough, he didn't look that much older at all, as if he never aged from the last time Rick remembered.

Wait. The last thing he remembered was...

"I see a light," he muttered, which caused the fading cries of anguish around him to struggle out of muffulature and become more pronounced.

Furrowing his brow through the fog that was the serenity of dying... of dying...

_I'm dying?_ He felt himself frown, as the light became brighter. Wait a minute. These were the moments leading up to death, complete nonexistence!

Rick tried to hold on to the sounds of earthliness, that of suffering people and his struggling heart, which was slowing, slowing, slowing... He found that somewhere along the line, he had phased out of his body. The only thing remaining was his detached consciousness, a concept of life, and what shouldn't be there, though. The light threatened to consume him completely, Rick speculating it was some assimilatory singular consciousness. Which it may have been, which with growing conviction he felt it was.

He held on to his fear and dismay, in spite of the light attempting to make him not to care, to join it in its swarming and vast collective.

_No,_ he responded, metaphysically backing away from this predator. It shone with the sun's intensity, trying to blind away a resistance that shouldn't have been there. But he wouldn't want his last words to convey a vague message that caused distress in others, echoed by a hundred million before him and a hundred million after. In general, his will to live was holding out, much too long for this light to absorb him.

It began to dim, darker and darker to Rick's relief.

Except, the window to the world disappeared, and as the grey began to phase into black, he felt his defiance fade and terror emerge. This blackness became darker and darker, and although this didn't feel like a collective consciousness at all, it was removing his sense of self much more quickly. As the darkness became impossibly dark, unfathomably absent of anything...

And yet darker still, something about this was going to break. There was a point where the darkness would fracture and mutate into something even worse, but there was still a distance-

-A deafening crack resounded, but it was made of silence. The abyss instantaneously became a void.

Nothing. Not darkness, not light, but nothing. Indescribable, for it was the blackest of blacks and whitest of whites, and yet it was not grey.

It amounted to no colour at all, no sound, no weather, no temperature, no sign, no feeling, no distance, no proportion, no spacing, and no time. It amounted to no concept.

And the consciousness of Richard Wright went out like a match in the wind.

_Wait, wait. I'm here now. I'm alive. That was on my agenda. That was... It was... they are... here are... I am....... me!_

With this sudden realisation, the world, even in this ward, became beautiful.

"I'm alive," he repeated out loud, more as a statement than an informing phrase, as that was already obvious. He should have said that before! Glancing sideways, then looking at David, who was in the process of composing himself.

Roger was reading _On the Road,_ perfectly not fine and unable to fully process the book. This was because a continuation of his greying hair had ensued through mere hours, making him worry that this anomaly may be something worse than he thought. The affliction was more mental than physical, as different speculations ran through his head. These speculations were half-formed, deformed, and convoluted. Maybe he had started to go mad or senile, the first signs of losing grip on reality manifested here. For now, he'd be aware of it, but for how long? Jack Kerouac didn't know, and if Roger was going to sit here and hallucinate the retelling of a seaboard-to-seaboard excursion, he was only wasting his time.

Shifting in his chair, contemplating removing himself from it, Roger suddenly heard the phone ring. This prompted him not to contemplate, but to get out of the chair to investigate whom this caller was and what their inquiry happened to be.

His phone was placated on the table over there, so he walked over and peered down at the number.

Looking at the combination of numbers, accessing his long-term memory...

Roger's eyes narrowed instantly at identification, his face darkening.

Obtaining the phone and picking up, he tried to sound as neutral as possible.

"Hello, David," he sighed. "What is it?"

Gilmour mumbled something over the phone he couldn't quite comprehend, but Roger didn't necessarily care. He usually started out with an introductory statement that had little substance or value.

"And?"

"Something happened that is beyond my belief."

"Elaborate, David, I haven't got all day."

"Roger, I have to establish that hesitation would naturally come with something such as the circumstances that have occurred."

Roger heard some off-ways conversation and background noise that sounded like tyres on a highway. Driving, David and someone else were driving.

"He'd like to speak to you," David resumed, frustratingly vague.

"Who is 'he'?"

"Look, it's easier not to explain and just listen."

Roger huffed, these trials really testing his patience. "Fine." He was already annoyed by the grandiose vagueness of this 'he'. Probably a producer or something.

"Hello?" A different voice breathed onto the phone. Roger stopped for a moment, puzzling over its familiarity. Unable to identify who it was, he decided to reply.

"Yes, who is this?"

"It's Rick."

Immediately spotting the illogicality of the situation, Roger swatted back.

"Nope, you are not. Dave, what's the point of this?" Assuming that the phone was on the speaker setting, David could hear him.

"Roger- listen," tried the familiar voice (too familiar), which Roger interrupted.

"Look, please don't waste my time like that. I don't see the point, and if you can't see it, please do not call me-"

The other line had the audacity to cut him off, and they proceeded to play a verbal tennis match. The more Roger heard the voice, the more his conviction of fallacy eroded. At the same time, he was indoctrinated with a bizarre story involving corpse freezers and... that was the only strange part. The increasing exposure was making him concerned for his own sanity, hearing less and less of a stranger and more of a dead man with an ambivalent connection to him.

He realised that if he were to find conclusive results, he was to request visual proof. After all, seeing was believing.

"I need a visual. Call me later when you have that," Roger finished. "I'm going, _now_." And he did, looking back at _On the Road_ lying on the coffee table.

The phone rang.

Nick glanced at the number, seeing it belonged to... Roger. His friend hadn't called in quite a while for anything, so Nick was intrigued.

"Hi, Roger," he said as he picked up.

"Hello. This is something of immediate urgency, Dave called me with some bizarre information. That being, apparently Richard came back from the dead."

Nick nearly laughed. "For all intents purposes, what exactly was that for?"

"The relatively concerning thing is, he had me speak to someone who sounded _exactly_ like him. I was sceptical, but the call was sustained, and this man knew too much and told some story that sounded convincing. What's your assessment?"

"Well, I'd have to see for myself. If-"

His phone then just rang again, request digitally superimposed over the call panel for Roger's dialling. Judging by the number, it _was_ David, who seemed to be coming after him too with this strange claim.

"-Roger, it seems David is calling me right now."

"You can hang up on me, you know what he's going to say."

"Right then, bye."

"Goodbye."

"Well, it seemed neither of them were too convinced," sighed Rick, stating the obvious. He looked down at his hands, which were impossibly tangible. He knew he wasn't a ghost, but the world he was now in seemed to treat him like one. Nick and Roger didn't believe he was in a state of living. David appeared alienated every time he looked at Rick, and 'every time' meant every few seconds, in which the driver would dart a glance, like he couldn't understand that Rick was _there,_ just to his left.

"Wait-" David said, interjecting Rick's thoughts, "Wouldn't one of your first actions be to call your children?"

"No." It came out more blunt than he intended. But it didn't matter, as the word was now precious, now important. The word 'No', the word that prevented him from becoming one with a mass of light. Refusal, denial, nonacceptance, nonconsenting, walking away, off, negative, nada, stop, nothing. He was here again because of _No,_ and it was even better this time to realise that

"What do you mean, no?"

"It's a waste of time. With what little time we have to live in such a world until an _awful_ eternity of nothingness, why should I care about them?"

A change in the air signalled that Rick might have said something off, but it looked that David wasn't incited to continue pursuing the subject. He was just... alive, and maybe that was enough.

Rick closed his eyes, trying to process this world for a second. It was still mostly the same... still real... the same grass blew in the same wind, the same rain spattered this car's window. There was a significant differentiation, however, and that was the pace of the world. Everyone knew everything, personal technology was at an all-time high of convenience, networking now as significant a the physical part of one's job, not to mention its reach into family life, and everyday entertainment. Only Net enthusiasts and a few other types engaged that much in the information super-highway, but now everyone did! And not only for e-mails, but for everything else, too. There was a free music service, which barely paid the hundreds of thousands of artists features the equity they deserved, and it was completely legal? Sites similar to WhatsApp inciting revolutionary protests within young people around the globe? And now, artificial intelligence was a developing prospect increasingly used?

Rick puzzled at the state of this semi-futuristic world. Although the culture shifted every decade or so, it wasn't this viscous, this exponential, and never this far. NASA now had competition from another recently-created space agency fronted by a genius billionaire, Virgin Airlines had a sector with the name 'Galactic', in that it was developing civilian routes to the stars, and other things that seemed too far out. Rick had always been a cynic of progress, not really believing in the next 'life-changing' invention that came along. But this was alarming. Autonomous robots, space travel, the vast web of the internet...

"Is this really that prevalent?" Rick asked, hoping the tinge of worry wouldn't convey.

"No," replied David, staring at the southward M11 in front of him. "It's only in its infancy. There's a lot of forward-moving projects of development in the world, but I think they're going to take multiple decades to see progress."

Rick nodded slowly. He was out of place here, but there must be some place that hasn't changed. He could see it in the natural surroundings, which had been consistent for millennia.

The dreams of humans, ever since they realised that there was something more out there, were being realised. But the terror of the cosmos loomed-

"Look, Rick, it's actually not that big of a deal," interjected David, who likely saw the unwarranted expression of crisis developing on his face. "Everybody's invested in worldly occurrences, too, it isn't a sudden altruistic collective with their face turned towards the stars. It's not that different."

Rick could argue about that, but nodded.

"What's on the radio these days?" he yet again awkwardly inquired, feeling like a child asking all these basic questions.

"More of the same," David shrugged, "However, rock is dead and no longer produced in the mainstream."

"Did Pink Floyd make any new albums?"

Nothing from David, just the tyres on the highway, just green blurs. This silence extended into an uncomfortable minute.

"One," the driver replied.

"Could you... tell me about it?" the passenger said, lacing his fingers together at the retracted response, feeling unnerved. The driver's statement couldn't be differentiated from hostility, anxiety, guilt, or trepidation. Another pause.

"In 2014 or so, I was looking through audio from some discarded jams we did on the Division Bell, and there was some very intriguing stuff on there. Nick and I recycled and refined it to make some new instrumental material. We agreed it was the last album we were going to do, since, well, you."

Rick nodded, turning his head to look out the window again.

"We kept your old keyboard parts in."

The passenger tilted his head. "I... don't know what to say about it. Considerate in foresight?" He looked back at the driver, who shrugged, but also had a twitching expression. "Also, what about Roger?"

"He was likely to insert lyrics with his own agenda. It wouldn't involve him in the first place, so we didn't tell him we were doing it at all."

"What a shame," sighed Rick, "I'd like to see him again."

"For what?"

"Reconciliation, of course."

"Roger is still an uncracked nut. He brought the remaining band together for an en-quote peace summit, only to inquire if Animals could be re-released on vinyl."

Rick cringed. "Well, I wonder if he'll be compelled to comply one way or another if I show myself."

"Who knows? He doesn't think logically."

Roger was waiting for this picture, but none came insofar. Meanwhile, he found himself heavily disliking the crass character of the book he was reading, whose narration told of his indulgent exploits of the road, and was incessantly talking about women and drugs. The reader was so bored, he felt he could spiral into a different tangent any minute now.

The drive the man was on was not at all accurate to what really happened on the road, at least nowadays. This thing was over fifty- wait, no, sixty years old, a _period piece_. With the world moving at a nightmarishly fast pace, even the kids were bewildered that the '90s began on the dawn of a January 1st three-plus decades ago. And were still kids, despite the fact that they were supposed to be adults. Maybe it was their fault, maybe not, as time was relative. Though Roger preferred not to complain and move with the times, the pace of it was getting ridiculous for everyone, even if they didn't realise it. Even though the years in his life which made the most impact seemed to walk by at an incomparable pace than any time before, this was unprecedented. In a state of entropy, the years just seemed to blur and blend. Looking back, at least the days were clear-cut, then it was the weeks, the months, and then only the years could be distinguished. Now, there was no significance to a year. The old dog would only raise its head and look at the clock when it heard that a new decade was rung in. Then, it would continue dozing, because it was only a number and a revolution around the sun.

Roger certainly didn't want to feel that way, but unfortunately, he did. No matter how hard he tried to engage with the world, he was treading over old ground, the same old ground he had tread when it was still old, years before. And again, and again. Well, who cared? Nobody was expecting him to do something like he did over half a lifetime ago... but he was expecting himself to. One of these days, inspiration would strike... somehow. Mostly, he just patched it up with continuous cholericism, which made people forget exactly who he was supposed to be, and what reputation he had failed to uphold.

Roger gritted his teeth. _Not true_ , he protested to himself. Usually, when he thought about these things too long, he'd fall down a well of depression, and it was all self-deprecating fibulature and fabrication.

_AND_ , he was losing his grip on reality, as Dave- no, David- well, _Gilmour_ , who he hadn't heard from in over a year, decided to waltz up to the phone and cause this confusion. And how exactly could Roger be convinced? It was that voice, of course, and Roger couldn't deny he felt regret for not reconciling with Rick before the keyboardist died. That was probably it. Guilt, which he hadn't had much time to think about, except the _entire time_ Wright was dead, only further exacerbating it. What exactly Gilmour's end goal was pervaded Roger, that was for sure. At least his adversary's last impression was that Roger was not convinced in the slightest. Or maybe in the slightest, Roger was having serious doubts about everything. Self-contradiction was a form of lost clarity, the ultimate manifestation of embarrassment.

As was natural with a cruel sequence of events, the phone went off again. Roger sighed, something placed between annoyance and relief. Naturally, it was Gilmour's number again, and it was only obligatory to pick up.

"What, you've got the picture?"

"That, and videography. I sent it to you already. Don't hang up yet."

_Christ, what's with that abrasion?_

Roger said nothing further, presumably going to see the proof. Hopefully, he'd believe it for once, because it was there, RIGHT THERE, and David found himself losing patience. Especially standing out in the rain like he was. Rick, on the other hand, seemed fascinated with the precipitation, eyeing its fall intently. With their exchange of conversation the entire way to David's house, the driver had managed to learn something about Rick's experience with death. He had gone through not only the near-death-experience, but a post-death-experience. As many theologians would assume, it had to do with the duality of light and dark, but neither of them positive. No existence, but once back into existence, a person remembered not existing, time progression simultaneously elapsed as normal and skipped? And what about that conglomerate of brilliance, was that to be interpreted as theology and spirituality in any shape or form? Or was it a definite thing?

Of course, Rick couldn't answer these questions, because he had no idea what the answer was. As David waited expectantly on the phone, the other man walked around in circles through the mist and fog. Speculation arose in David's mind, fear overtaking him. He walked a bit closer to Rick, not wanting him to disappear again. It somehow occurred to the guitarist that the keyboardist's state of living was fragile, and if shrouded by the weather could be dissipated. He stared in terror, holding away the phone, visually clinging onto this live-and-dead creature wearing his coat.

A clearing of one's throat interrupted, sourced from the phone. "Fine," Roger finally replied, David keeping one eye on Rick, "Just... whatever this is, you better not be fucking around with me. By that, if it's all a lie, _David_... I'll have no idea what your agenda is."

"It's the truth, I swear," the italicized name replied, wondering why Roger's intonation was indicative of a threat, but in his dialogue offered no danger.

"If you contacted me in the first place, does that mean I should come?"

"If I didn't provide you with all this evidence, why exactly would I not? Of course yes!"

Long sigh over the phone. "Okay, depending on how fast I can execute the cancellation of my schedule, sometime this week. I'll relay what you gave me to Nick. End of discussion?"

"Yes."

Roger hung up before David did, leaving rain and silence. Rick, having overheard the conversation, determined to confirm this information, set on asking questions again. "So, he's convinced."

"Not necessarily," David replied, pinching the bridge of his nose, "But I guess he is invested in flying here, then."

"Should we-"

A different figure appeared from around the corner, from the direction of the house, the two turning to look.

"You're back?" Polly asked, stopping to look at David. Her eyes then flitted to the second figure, furrowing her brow. "David, who's this?"

"It's a bit tricky to explain..." he replied, trailing off, averting his eyes as he searched for a suitable explanation.

"Um, hello, Polly," Rick substituted, shifting from side to side. "There's something that... happened. I, uh..."

David's wife squinted at him, the impact not immediate.

"...What?" was also her first inquiry. "I... you look like... wait, wait, wait. David, is this real?"

He nodded affirmatively. She came closer, her expression now holding scrutinisation. "Rick? Rick Wright?"

"...Yes..." the inquired replied, not able to hold eye contact. His eyes drifted to the ground, feeling strange at the second bout of attention.

_Personal business_ was the same announcement/phrase/excuse Roger scattered all over his e-mails, as well as different iterations of _no_ and _cancellation_. It felt horrid to do it so, especially to people he felt he had obligation to, but he tried to reassure himself that he'd get straight back to business once all was said and done. However, a nagging feeling told him that this could extend into a longer affair. David and all his frivolities, never busy... Roger couldn't just go in and out to check if Wright was alive, he'd have to stare bewildered for a few days or so. And dealing with the other business he had just forgotten, that being the mystery of grey hair appearing at an unprecedented rate. If it got any worse, he'd have to explain it to Gilmour one way or another. And, the other consideration was how to react if it was some bizarre bait-lie. What kind of mental illness would the old guitarist need to procure such an unreasonable reason to... but what reason in the first place? Without any reasoning as to what the reason would be, Roger temporarily took the Wright situation as reality, at least until he figured out Gilmour's real motive. He also wasn't going to be packing his bags just yet, it would be better to contemplate on this for a night or two.

Jack Kerouac lay open page-down on the nightstand, the room dark and empty with the exception of Roger. He couldn't sleep at all, which confounded him. He had little trouble placing an opinion on the main conflict of today, and wasn't that concerned by the grey in his hair. At least consciously, maybe it was the plethora of fragmented thoughts floating around, ricocheting in slow motion as they attempted to find a solidifying point.

Or, the obvious choice, it was cold as Chelyabinsk outside, and the air was seeping in through the open window. Even moreso unfortunate, the window was jammed, and Roger thought he didn't care when he found out earlier today. Clearly, he did now, but he wasn't about to get up for that, also partially due to the weather. But he still persisted in trying not to care about the weather, as many people lived all their lives with inadequate protection from the cold, not to mention hunger and disease, right here in this state. Instead, he thought about how much he hated the New York governor and Attorney General, and how their lawsuit against the Shinnecock tribe was unjust and unnecessary while they only half-cared about it. Meanwhile, it would devastate the natives, the majority of which were already povertous and starving.

Or maybe, he just had random insomnia. There was too much to deal with in the world, and he had to focus on one thing at a time. However, the thoughts just kept on cycling through his head, Gilmour, Wright, miscellaneous injustice, grey hair, and sometimes a loose tangent that turned out to be a sinkhole of vicious spiralling into mind-hell. The insomniac tried to struggle out of the latter, which only made him more aware and therefore more awake. He couldn't close his eyes, keeping a vigil on the ceiling, but was feeling increasingly exhausted as the night's minutes slowed to an agonizing pace. Maybe this was where the present day slowed down, when one couldn't tell the progression of time visually, but rather with an inaccurate internal clock. Additionally, most humans were diurnal creatures, and the only people who were nocturnal were overworked or engaging in questionable activity. Still, the majority of those would be indoors, and those outdoors had to have no sense of time whatsoever or be _really_ suspicious. He didn't care if New York was the 'city that never sleeps', he lived in Southampton. Who ever wanted that characteristic to spill over into their residence?

Finally, after some time, he got up and glanced at the clock. It said four-fifteen.

Roger was taken aback by how little time had passed. He was expecting it to be some time just before sunrise, but doing nothing in the dark, it was impossible to tell the time. The ice had frozen inside of him, further preserving the distortion of elapsation. Roger decided not to resume in his futile attempt to sleep, though he knew he'd regret it later.

_I'm getting too old for sleep, even_ , he thought as he flicked on the bathroom light. The light stabbed harshly for a few seconds, but when Roger's vision adjusted, he was staring at the mirror. And, in the mirror, there was definitely something wrong.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he said.


End file.
